Like Feeling a Heartbeat

[COMMENT: One of those precious classic stories of
conversion. Gloria Dei!

Wright refers to George Berkeley's philosophy. If you
wish to read more on Berkeley, read
P.E.G. Berkeley opened doors for me which resolved many
philosophical problems about the Biblical vs. secular/Newtonian worldview.
God holds us (see Biblical Worldview)
as it were, on His hand and speaks to us, as if He were holding us close to
Himself where we can hear His heartbeat.
E. Fox]

Of all the conversion stories I've read over the past couple of
years, none have resonated with me more deeply or had a more
powerful impact on me than that of author
John C. Wright. A former
atheist, he is able to articulate what it's like to go from
content atheism to deep belief in a way that I cannot.

I've been toying with writing my own conversion story before I
enter the Church at Easter, but the thing that keeps hanging me
up is explaining what it feels like to believe. I'd like to
describe it in a way that all can understand, even those who,
like me a few years ago, have never known for a single moment
what it's like to know God.

Of all the rambling words I've thrown at the subject, none come
close to Wright's simple analogy: "I continue to be aware of the
Holy Spirit within me, like feeling a heartbeat." Yes. It is
indeed just as subtle, and just as powerful, as that. A quiet,
fundamental awareness.

I emailed Wright to get permission to reprint his story since I
thought my readers might enjoy it. I encourage you to read the
whole thing.

Jennifer F.

The conversion story of John C.
Wright

My conversion was in two parts: a natural part and a
supernatural part.

Here is the natural part: first, over a period of two years my
hatred toward Christianity eroded due to my philosophical
inquiries.

Rest assured, I take the logical process of philosophy very
seriously, and I am impatient with anyone who is not a rigorous
and trained thinker. Reason is the tool men use to determine if
their statements about reality are valid: there is no other.
Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves,
because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men,
ideas they have not examined.

To my surprise and alarm, I found that, step by step, logic
drove me to conclusions no modern philosophy shared, but only
this ancient and (as I saw it then) corrupt and superstitious
foolery called the Church. Each time I followed the argument
fearlessly where it lead, it kept leading me, one remorseless
rational step at a time, to a position the Church had been
maintaining for more than a thousand years. That haunted me.

Second, I began to notice how shallow, either simply optimistic
or simply pessimistic, other philosophies and views of life
were.

The public conduct of my fellow atheists was so lacking in
sobriety and gravity that I began to wonder why, if we atheists
had a hammerlock on truth, so much of what we said was pointless
or naive. I remember listening to a fellow atheist telling me
how wonderful the world would be once religion was swept into
the dustbin of history, and I realized the chap knew nothing
about history. If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet
Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies,
instead of the land of corpses.

I would listen to my fellow atheists, and they would sound as
innocent of any notion of what real human life was like as the
Man from Mars who has never met human beings or even heard clear
rumors of them. Then I would read something written by Christian
men of letters, Tolkien, Lewis, or G.K. Chesterton, and see a
solid understanding of the joys and woes of human life. They
were mature men.

I would look at the rigorous logic of St. Thomas Aquinas, the
complexity and thoroughness of his reasoning, and compare that
to the scattered and mentally incoherent sentimentality of some
poseur like Nietzsche or Sartre. I can tell the difference
between a rigorous argument and shrill psychological flatulence.
I can see the difference between a dwarf and a giant.

My wife is a Christian and is extraordinary patient, logical,
and philosophical. For years I would challenge and condemn her
beliefs, battering the structure of her conclusions with every
argument, analogy, and evidence I could bring to bear. I am a
very argumentative man, and I am as fell and subtle as a serpent
in debate. All my arts failed against her. At last I was forced
to conclude that, like non-Euclidian geometry, her world-view
logically followed from its axioms (although the axioms were
radically mystical, and I rejected them with contempt). Her
persistence compared favorably to the behavior of my fellow
atheists, most of whom cannot utter any argument more mentally
alert than a silly ad Hominem attack. Once again, I saw that I
was confronting a mature and serious world-view, not merely a
tissue of fables and superstitions.

Third, a friend of mine asked me what evidence, if any, would be
sufficient to convince me that the supernatural existed. This
question stumped me. My philosophy at the time excluded the
contemplation of the supernatural axiomatically: by definition
(my definition) even the word "super-natural" was a
contradiction in terms. Logic then said that, if my conclusions
were definitional, they were circular. I was assuming the
conclusion of the subject matter in dispute.

Now, my philosophy at the time was as rigorous and exact as 35
years of study could make it (I started philosophy when I was
seven). This meant there was no point for reasonable doubt in
the foundational structure of my axioms, definitions, and common
notions. This meant that, logically, even if God existed, and
manifested Himself to me, my philosophy would force me to reject
the evidence of my senses, and dismiss any manifestations as a
coincidence, hallucination, or dream. Under this hypothetical,
my philosophy would force me to an exactly wrong conclusion due
to structural errors of assumption.

A philosopher (and I mean a serious and manly philosopher, not a
sophomoric boy) does not use philosophy to flinch away from
truth or hide from it. A philosophy composed of structural
false-to-facts assumptions is insupportable.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads, and has no patience
with mere emotion.

But it was impossible, logically impossible, that I should ever
believe in such nonsense as to believe in the supernatural. It
would be a miracle to get me to believe in miracles.

So I prayed. "Dear God, I know (because I can prove it with the
certainty that a geometer can prove opposite angles are equal)
that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to
entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So
just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some
fashion that will prove your case. If you do not answer, I can
safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in
you, or that you have no power to produce evidence to persuade
me. The former argues you not beneficent, the latter not
omnipotent: in either case unworthy of worship. If you do not
exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose
nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for
your kind cooperation in this matter, John Wright."

I had a heart attack two days later. God obviously has a sense
of humor as well as a sense of timing.

Now for the supernatural part.

My wife called someone from her Church, which is a denomination
that practices healing through prayer. My wife read a passage
from their writings, and the pain vanished. If this was a
coincidence, then, by God, I could use more coincidences like
that in my life.

Feeling fit, I nonetheless went to the hospital, so find out
what had happened to me. The diagnosis was grave, and a
quintuple bypass heart surgery was ordered. So I was in the
hospital for a few days.

Those were the happiest days of my life. A sense of peace and
confidence, a peace that passes all understanding, like a field
of energy entered my body. I grew aware of a spiritual dimension
of reality of which I had hitherto been unaware. It was like a
man born blind suddenly receiving sight.

The Truth to which my lifetime as a philosopher had been devoted
turned out to be a living thing. It turned and looked at me.
Something from beyond the reach of time and space, more
fundamental than reality, reached across the universe and broke
into my soul and changed me. This was not a case of defense and
prosecution laying out evidence for my reason to pick through: I
was altered down to the root of my being.

It was like falling in love. If you have not been in love, I
cannot explain it. If you have, you will raise a glass with me
in toast.

Naturally, I was overjoyed. First, I discovered that the death
sentence under which all life suffers no longer applied to me.
The governor, so to speak, had phoned. Second, imagine how
puffed up with pride you'd be to find out you were the son of
Caesar, and all the empire would be yours. How much more, then,
to find out you were the child of God?

I was also able to perform, for the first time in my life, the
act which I had studied philosophy all my life to perform, which
is, to put aside all fear of death. The Roman Stoics, whom I so
admire, speak volumes about this philosophical fortitude. But
their lessons could not teach me this virtue. The blessing of
the Holy Spirit could and did impart it to me, as a gift. So the
thing I've been seeking my whole life was now mine.

Then, just to make sure I was flooded with evidence, I received
three visions like Scrooge being visited by three ghosts. I was
not drugged or semiconscious, I was perfectly alert and in my
right wits.

It was not a dream. I have had dreams every night of my life. I
know what a dream is. It was not a hallucination. I know someone
who suffers from hallucinations, and I know the signs. Those
signs were not present here.

Then, just to make even more sure that I was flooded with
overwhelming evidence, I had a religious experience. This is
separate from the visions, and took place several days after my
release from the hospital, when my health was moderately well. I
was not taking any pain-killers, by the way, because I found
that prayer could banish pain in moments.

During this experience, I became aware of the origin of all
thought, the underlying oneness of the universe, the nature of
time: the paradox of determinism and free will was resolved for
me. I saw and experienced part of the workings of a mind
infinitely superior to mine, a mind able to count every atom in
the universe, filled with paternal love and jovial good humor.
The cosmos created by the thought of this mind was as intricate
as a symphony, with themes and reflections repeating themselves
forward and backward through time: prophecy is the awareness
that a current theme is the foreshadowing of the same theme
destined to emerge with greater clarity later. A prophet is one
who is in tune, so to speak, with the music of the cosmos.

The illusionary nature of pain, and the logical impossibility of
death, were part of the things I was shown.

Now, as far as these experiences go, they are not unique. They
are not even unusual. More people have had religious experiences
than have seen the far side of the moon. Dogmas disagree, but
mystics are strangely (I am tempted to say mystically) in
agreement.

The things I was shown have echoes both in pagan and Christian
tradition, both Eastern and Western (although, with apologies to
my pagan friends, I see that Christianity is the clearest
expression of these themes, and also has a logical and ethical
character other religions expressions lack).

Further, the world view implied by taking this vision seriously
(1) gives supernatural sanction to conclusions only painfully
reached by logic (2) supports and justifies a mature rather than
simplistic world-view (3) fits in with the majority traditions
not merely of the West, but also, in a limited way, with the
East.

As a side issue, the solution of various philosophical
conundrums, like the problem of the one and the many, mind-body
duality, determinism and indeterminism, and so on, is an added
benefit. If you are familiar with such things, I follow the
panentheist idealism of Bishop Berkeley; and, no, Mr. Johnson
does not refute him merely by kicking a stone.

From that time to this, I have had prayers answered and seen
miracles: each individually could be explained away as a
coincidence by a skeptic, but not taken as a whole. From that
time to this, I continue to be aware of the Holy Spirit within
me, like feeling a heartbeat. It is a primary impression coming
not through the medium of the senses: an intuitive axiom, like
the knowledge of one's own self-being.

This, then, is the final answer to your question: it would not
be rational for me to doubt something of which I am aware on a
primary and fundamental level.

Occam's razor cuts out hallucination or dream as a likely
explanation for my experiences. In order to fit these
experiences into an atheist framework, I would have to resort to
endless ad hoc explanations: this lacks the elegance of
geometers and parsimony of philosophers.

I would also have to assume all the great thinkers of history
were fools. While I was perfectly content to support this belief
back in my atheist days, this is a flattering conceit difficult
to maintain seriously.

On a pragmatic level, I am somewhat more useful to my fellow man
than before, and certainly more charitable. If it is a daydream,
why wake me up? My neighbors will not thank you if I stop
believing in the mystical brotherhood of man.

Besides, the atheist non-god is not going to send me to non-hell
for my lapse of non-faith if it should turn out that I am
mistaken.

Posted by John C. Wright on Catholic Answers Forums on Wednesday
November 23, 2005 at 11:21 AM. Reprinted with permission.